WELCOME TO LETTERS FROM THE CRANK, CRANKY COMMENTARY ON CURRENT EVENTS – Warning to snowflakes and the politically correct crowd, this website likely will offend you, but is entertaining

Is there any sadder waste of time, money, resources and talent than mock NFL (or any sport) drafts?

From:   https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/walking-while-texting-dangers-study/

“Walking while texting can be dangerous, researchers find

BY MALLIKA MARSHALL, MD

AUGUST 10, 2023 / 5:35 PM / CBS BOSTON

BOSTON – Walking may not be so healthy if you text while doing it.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia had 50 college students navigate a slippery tiled walkway. They found that those who texted while walking were more likely to fall. And even if they didn’t slip, their texting accuracy was worse while walking than while sitting.

The scientists said putting up warning signs probably won’t work for young people who take risks and will continue to text even if they know it’s hazardous. But, they said, perhaps phones should have a screen lock mechanism that engages when it senses the user is walking.”

            Yes, there’s nothing like finally having legitimate academically researched proof of the blindingly obvious.

Sources:  https://www.foxnews.com/us/delaware-lowers-passing-score-bar-exam-push-for-racial-diversity-not-supposed-be-barrier; https://courts.delaware.gov/forms/download.aspx?id=183288

          If you thought lawyers were dumb, well, they’re about to get dumber, in Delaware anyway.  And that’s a pretty hefty lift seeing as our own President Biden, maybe the dumbest President ever, supposedly graduated from Delaware Law School decades ago.  So that school is actually going to go from dumb to dumber. 

In the name of the holy trinity of diversity, equity and inclusion, the Delaware Supreme Court has, among other tinkerings, lowered the passing score on the state’s bar exam.  Other changes include offering the 200-question multiple-choice exam twice instead of once a year.  “The number of essays on the exam will be decreased from eight to four, and the number of essay topics will be reduced from 14 to 10.  The clerkship requirement is also being lowered from 21 weeks to 12 weeks, and the mandatory list of 25 legal proceedings that potential lawyers must attend has been shortened to 18 out of 30 possible items.”

          As reported by Fox, “Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr. pushed back against any assertion that they reflect a ‘lowering of standards’ and referred to them as a ‘modernization’ of the admission process aimed at aligning with the standards in other states.  Seitz, who began the diversity project that led to a report that suggested changes to the exam, maintained that such revisions will enhance competitiveness in attracting legal talent to the state that serves as a hub of business litigation, according to Reuters.”

          But get this – the Chief Justice also said that “[t]he bar exam is not supposed to be a barrier to entering the profession but is supposed to be a test of an applicant’s ability to successfully practice law in Delaware. . . . “

          Well, if the bar exam isn’t supposed to be a barrier to keep unqualified people from getting a law license, then we don’t know what it is supposed to be.  Left unexplained is exactly how dumbing down the exam along with other changes is supposed to be a more accurate indicator of “an applicant’s ability to successfully practice law in Delaware.”  Not to mention reducing the number of essays and essay topics, and attendance at legal proceedings, all of which would seem to cut against the claim that the exam would then be a more accurate indicator of an applicant’s ability to practice law in Delaware. The inverse would appear to most people to be true, not this nonsensical lawyer-babble obviously aimed purely at political correctness and dodging pressure from identity interest groups.  That is, the result will be that Delaware lawyers are less qualified than they already are. That’s progress for you.

It strikes us that perhaps there is something to this supposed “structural racism” after all.  How else did the blacks get stuck with the shortest month, February, for Black History Month?  Women’s History Month is in a real full month, as is pride month in June, and all the other months, whatever history they supposedly celebrate.  And the blacks have to share “Juneteenth” with the pride people, which must really chaff non-pride blacks. 

Obviously a remedy is needed for this outrageous discrimination.  Therefore, we propose that President Biden should issue [yet] another Executive Order mandating that February, in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion, henceforth shall have 31 days each year.  To achieve that, such an Order could, say, eliminate President’s Day out of January (since that’s just a bunch of mostly old white guys), the 4th of July out of July (since we’re a racist country with nothing patriotic to celebrate that doesn’t trample on the rights of blacks), and Thanksgiving out of November (since only whites have anything to celebrate).  In Bidenese, that would make the enlargement of February already “paid for.”

Source:            https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosi-sanders-and-the-media-11634757936?mod=MorningEditorialReport&mod=djemMER_h

            If there was any doubt about the arrogance of the so-called “progressive” democrats, and those democrats expecting the media to be in bed with them, it has been resolved by the following quote from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

            “Last week Rudy Takala noted at Mediaite:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Tuesday lamented the media’s failure to sell the $3.5 trillion spending bill proposed by congressional Democrats.

‘Well, I think you all could do a better job of selling it, to be very frank with you,’ [she] said at a daily press briefing with reporters, in response to a question about the proposal.”

                Now this comes from the same woman who said Congress would have to pass the Affordable Care Act before any of us, even her own Congressional colleagues, could find out what’s in it, so we suppose this arrogance is no surprise.  Still, it’s news to us that this is the media’s job.  Sad to say, the historical adherence to facts and investigation (by some formerly legitimate outlets, anyway) and not advocacy has gone by the boards, such that you simply cannot trust anymore what avowed progressive mainstream media says and prints, which includes formerly respected publications like the New York Times (all the news that’s fit to print indeed) and the Boston Globe.  Sigh…at least the Globe has good funnies and sports.

Source:            https://oberlinreview.org/25000/opinions/male-workers-allowed-into-baldwin-unsettling-residents/

            Oberlin College in Ohio must be some kinda place.  According to the above article, Oberlin has a dorm named Baldwin Cottage, which “is the home of the Women and Trans Collective. The College website describes the dorm as ‘a close-knit community that provides women and transgendered persons with a safe space for discussion, communal living, and personal development.’ Cisgender men are not allowed to live on the second and third floors, and many residents choose not to invite cisgender men to that space.”

            In case you weren’t aware, “cisgender” means “straight” in the real world, which is a place far indeed from where at least some residents of Baldwin Cottage live.  Oberlin apparently is engaged in a project at Baldwin Cottage to install/replace radiators, so an email went out from the Oberlin “area coordinator for Multicultural and Identity-Based Communities” (wokespeak, indeed) informing residents that radiators would be installed in the coming days. 

            This notice caused one resident, a Peter Fray-Witzer, to write an op-ed to the Oberlin student paper.  He wrote that “I was angry, scared, and confused.”  “In general, I am very averse to people entering my personal space. This anxiety was compounded by the fact that the crew would be strangers, and they were more than likely to be cisgender men. . . . The next day, I waited apprehensively. The workers began installing in common spaces, and I could see immediately that they were all men. It was clear that the College had not made a special request that male workers not be allowed onto the upper floors of Baldwin.”

            Yikes!  The radiator installers were all men, how terrible, what a shock!  Of course, he assumes they were “cisgender,” though that may or may not be true.  We can only assume that since this area is only for women and “transgender” students, that a resident named “Peter” is one of these confused girls pampered by his/her parents who thinks she’s a guy.  Or he’s a guy masquerading as a woman who hasn’t changed his name yet for some reason – hey, as long as he isn’t “cisgender,” right? Well, who knows with these coddled kids? 

            In any event, we’re not sure who else he (or she, or they, or it, or whatever) thought was going to install these radiators – is there an all-female or all-“transgender” radiator installation crew at the College, or even within 25 thousand miles of it, that the College could hire for just these two floors out of the entire campus?  Seems unlikely to us.  And why should the College go through such trouble anyway – rather, this kid should grow up and be the man he pretends to be. He also whines that gee, couldn’t this work have been done in the summer?  Well, if he’d been paying attention to the world he’d know that getting staff for anything these days is a terrible chore and it certainly stands to reason that if the College could have gotten this done in the summer it would have if it made sense logistically. Or maybe they never even thought about it – so what? But the fact is that there’s a bigger world out there than the 2nd and 3rd floors of Baldwin Cottage and neither the College nor the world were created just to cater to the whims and confused “identity” of snowflakes like this. 

Reference:        https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/10/13/magazine/heres-what-doulas-do-how-theyre-fighting-black-maternal-health/?event=event12 

                In an otherwise standard Boston Globe woke but somehwat interesting article, this Boston Globe “journalist” went out of her way to avoid calling pregnant women “pregnant women” in a description about what doulas are and do:

                “Trained in holistic pregnancy and postpartum care, birth doulas guide pregnant people — cisgender women and those of other gender identities — to getting the medical, emotional, and social care they need.”       

                C’mon…

References:        https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/health/aspirin-heart-attack-stroke.html; https://www.wsj.com/articles/partisan-science-antiscience-facts-misrepresentation-fauci-lancet-lab-leak-11633960740?mod=hp_opin_pos_4#cxrecs_s

                Over the past 20-30 odd years, we’ve all been told by the “experts” that we all should take a baby aspirin everyday to help ward off heart attacks/disease.  It was a magical and cheap way to promote heart health.

                Guess what?  Now the “experts” say we shouldn’t, not at all.  In fact, the risk of serious side effects “far outweight” the supposed benefit.  According to the esteemed New York Times, the king of “follow the science”

”Doctors should no longer routinely begin prescribing a daily regimen of low-dose aspirin to most people at high risk of a first heart attack or stroke, according to new draft guidelines by a U.S. panel of experts. The proposed recommendation is based on mounting evidence that the risk of serious side effects far outweighs the benefit of what was once considered a remarkably cheap weapon in the fight against heart disease.

“The U.S. panel also plans to retreat from its 2016 recommendation to take baby aspirin for the prevention of colorectal cancer, guidance that was groundbreaking at the time. The panel said more recent data had raised questions about the putative benefits for cancer, and that more research was needed.”

                You should read the Wall Street Journal opinion piece cited above if you want to know what “follow the science” really means, and it does NOT mean to supinely accept what these so-called “experts” say or promote.  Why?  Very simply, science is a process, not an end result with a cold hard solid answer you can rely on. 

                It’s hilarious watching the Boston Globe scratching its head and wondering why Boston isn’t going to have an elected black mayor.  How did Boston miss its moment to elect a Black leader? – The Boston Globe.  Of course they and the blacks blame it on whites not supporting a black candidate.  They ignore a few simple facts on that score.  First, only about 21% of the eligible voters voted.  We’re sure there are a ton of black voters in that 79% who didn’t vote, but they apparently didn’t consider it important enough to vote, never mind have a black mayor.  Hey, if the blacks as a group don’t care enough to have a black mayor and get their act together to make it happen, why the heck should anyone else? 

                Second, there were 2 black candidates who collectively received way more votes than either Wu or Essaibi George.  So, again, if it isn’t important enough to the blacks for them to have a black mayor and all get behind one so the vote doesn’t get split, why should anyone else care (other than the progressive woke morons in the Globe editorial room).  There was an incumbent black mayor, and they still didn’t support her??? 

                Third, there’s been a black acting mayor exercising the power of the incumbency for the last 9 months or so, and she got whipped.  Every chance she had to make a good campaign decision she made a bad one.  Rose garden strategies don’t work for acting mayors with no record as mayor; that only works when you have a decent record to rely on, which in this case was missing.  To be fair, she was handed a s— sandwich almost immediately after being installed from the Police Commissioner dust-up, and she doesn’t appear to have recovered from that being colossally mishandled by everyone, not just her.

Moreover, the black population in Boston has been decreasing and blacks flee the city for various reasons, the Globe of course blaming it on gentrification by whites that is driving black residents out of neighborhoods they used to dominate. Boston is losing Black population, new census data show, even as it could soon elect its first Black mayor – The Boston Globe. So this debacle, as the Globe posits it, should really be less of an issue than it ever was, not a bigger issue. An ebbing black population coupled with a flourishing Asian and Hispanic population, would seem to result in a reduction in black voting power and commensurate increases in the voting power of the others. Therefore the fact that two other menstruatingpersons of color, but non-black, are the two finalists shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

                Fifth and finally, maybe, just maybe, the Boston voting population decided to go with merit rather than race.  Pretty novel concept these days, isn’t it? 

Reference: Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing – WSJ; Allies of fishermen file suit to reverse Vineyard Wind approval – The Boston Globe; Lithium Batteries’ Dirty Secret: Manufacturing Them Leaves Massive Carbon Footprint | IndustryWeek; Scientists just overcame a major hurdle in nuclear fusion research | Salon.com; IPCC 2021 report: How bad will climate change get? – Vox

File this under “you can’t make this stuff up.” England uses a lot of wind power from windmill units in the North Sea. But over the last couple of months, believe it or not, the North Sea hasn’t been too windy. So England’s buying carbon-based power from European sources, and the price of that has increased substantially as a result.

And of course it’s climate change and fossil fuels that have made the wind stop blowing. Closer to home, you can rely on fishermen and fishermenstruatingpersons to litigate the various proposed wind farms off the Massachusetts coast, so that will be tied up in the courts for years. So that isn’t going to help anytime soon. And just wait until new mini-nuke plants start to be seriously proposed, that will be yet another litigation bonanza for someone. And others are still hot on developing nuclear fusion – we’ll see how that goes. Not to mention that these fancy batteries for e-cars, by and large, aren’t carbon-efficient in the least since their manufacture leaves huge carbon footprints. (“Once in operation, electric cars certainly reduce your carbon footprint, but making the lithium-ion batteries could emit 74% more CO2 than for conventional cars.”) And just curiously, where do the old batteries go? Just asking.

Anyway, the Green New Deal is going to solve all our problems, right? Even if you buy the unfounded apocalyptic clamorings of the progressives, who evidently have not actually read any of the reports they rely on, such as those put out by the UN. The most recent one of which, in fact, backs off the dire predictions of prior reports. Won’t read that in the NT Time or the Boston Globe. Not that there isn’t work to be done, but it ain’t as bad as the left wingnuts say.